Audio Download

The Book of Joel – Joe 1:13-20 Part 2

“And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore, it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness, whose end shall be according to their works” – 2Co 11:14-15.

[Study Aired July 20, 2024]

The Book of Joel is a relatively broad summary primarily for the Bride, although inclusive of all mankind’s transition from the flesh to being recreated as God. In the first part of Joel 1, we learned that locusts symbolise the innumerable lies and inventions of the Christian churches in the wilderness, drinking in their smooth, ear-tickling, more agreeable doctrines, thus creating their own clothing of self-righteousness. Moreover, now, in this second part of Chapter 1, the Bride precedes her brothers and sisters in Babylon for her appeal to repentance. Here, in the verses in John and Thessalonians below, is a reference to the Bride’s calling. The following in Isaiah 4:1 signifies the harlot church, from which the Lord wrested his incipient Bride, similar to the Angel of the Lord forcibly removing (dragging) Lot’s wife and his daughters out of Sodom.

Joh 15:18  If the world hates you, ye know that it hated me before it hated you [The Romans of Christ’s time didn’t hate him; it was the haters of his very household, the Jews who are Christians].
Joh 15:19  If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.

2Th 2:13  But we are bound to give thanks always to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: 
2Th 2:14  Whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

Isa 4:1  And in that day [ever since the cross] seven women [seven equals all the churches of Asia and the Christian world, today] shall take hold of one man [Christ], saying, We will eat our own bread, and wear our own apparel: only let us be called by thy name, to take away our reproach.

Crucially, concocting our own lying doctrines through our multitude of equally lying counsel of self-appointed elders in Babylon is what we have to repent. It is those inventive doctrines that clothe us in filthy, blood-soaked apparel. It is us, the ‘priests and ministers of the altar’, the embryonic Bride of Christ, at whom Joel 1:13-20 aims its indictments.

Job 9:30  If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean;
Job 9:31  Yet [Christ] shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me.

Pro 6:26  For by means of a whorish woman [Us as a harlot] a man is brought to a piece of bread: 

Being submerged in the ditch for our cleansing by our supposed pure doctrine will result in Jeremiah’s declaration:

Jer 2:19  Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee: know therefore and see that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the LORD thy God, and that my fear is not in thee, saith the Lord GOD of hosts. 

Pro 6:26  For by means of a whorish woman  [Babylonian Christianity as greater Israel] a man is brought to a piece of bread: and the adulteress will hunt for the precious life. 
Pro 6:27  Can a man take [God’s fiery word or “strange fire”] fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned?

Job 15:16  How much more abominable and filthy is man, which drinketh iniquity like water? 

Zec 3:3  Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel. 
Zec 3:4  And he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him. And unto him he said, Behold, I have caused thine iniquity to pass from thee, and I will clothe thee with change of raiment.

Joshua was a faithful servant of God, masterfully dispatching the enemies of Israel with his bloody sword; his clothes were thus bloodied and filthy. Blood spiritually is Christ’s word, his very body! Blood, the physical essence of life, prefigures death to the Old Man and life to the New Man. If blood is spilt spiritually, it means the death of the truth or lies. Since the Elect metaphorically kill another person with the fiery sword of God’s word, that action results from them having killed us for our rejection of God’s word just as we killed Christ physically and spiritually – it all is figuratively spilling blood.

Isa 59:7 Their feet run to evil, and they make haste to shed innocent blood: their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity; wasting and destruction are in their paths.

Joe 2:30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke. 
Joe 2:31 The sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before the great and the terrible day of the LORD come.

Rev 17:6 And I saw the woman [Babylon the Great] drunken with the blood [Her zealous killing of God’s word] of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus: and when I saw her, I wondered with great admiration.

A Call to Repentance

Joe 1:13  Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. 
Joe 1:14  Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD, 
Joe 1:15  Alas for the day! for the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. 
Joe 1:16  Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God? 
Joe 1:17  The seed is rotten under their clods, the garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered. 
Joe 1:18  How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. 
Joe 1:19  O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field. 
Joe 1:20  The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness.

Significations:

Joe 1:13  Gird yourselves, and lament, ye priests: howl, ye ministers of the altar: come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God: for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God. 

As earlier stated, the Bride of Christ is the priest and minister of Christ the “altar“, under whom we spiritually die daily.

Heb 13:9  Be not carried about with divers and strange [bloody] doctrines. For it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats, which have not profited them that have been occupied therein. 
Heb 13:10  We have an altar [Christ, our husband that only we can touch], whereof they [Gentile Christianity, the world] have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle [The Bride, the Temple of God]. 
Heb 13:11  For the bodies of those beasts [animal sacrifices symbolising our death], whose blood is brought into the sanctuary by the high priest for sin, are burned without the camp [Equal to the Temple we are being chiselled into shape outside of the construction site]. 
Heb 13:12  Wherefore Jesus also, that he might sanctify the people with his own blood, suffered without the gate. 
Heb 13:13  Let us go forth therefore unto him without the camp, bearing his reproach. 

When we were entrenched in Babylon and early in our calling, we often howled prayers all night and every other night for our Lord to release us from severe chastisement when, primarily, all we had to do was acknowledge our sin (Jer 3:13) and get up and walk in His statutes and judgements as the Lord told Joshua following Achan’s sin! An unrepented sin is an “accursed thing” spoken of in Joshuah 7 that we think is a trifling thing and thus our “meat and drink offering”, our prayers are not answered as we think they should.

Jos 7:10  And the LORD said unto Joshua, Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face? 
Jos 7:11  Israel [you and I] hath sinned, and they have also transgressed my covenant which I commanded them: for they have even taken of the accursed thing, and have also stolen, and dissembled also, and they have put it even among their own stuff. 
Jos 7:12  Therefore the children of Israel could not stand before their enemies, but turned their backs before their enemies, because they were accursed: neither will I be with you any more, except ye destroy the accursed from among you. 

The day of the Lord is at hand when we obtain his favour by first acknowledging our sins from our heart, and then our ‘fast’ becomes a sweet savour and joy to him.

Joe 1:14  Sanctify ye a fast, call a solemn assembly, gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the LORD your God, and cry unto the LORD, 
Joe 1:15  Alas for the day! For the day of the LORD is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. 
Joe 1:16  Is not the meat cut off before our eyes, yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God? 

That destruction of our old man within can only be effectively accomplished by the acceptable fast our Lord has chosen that soundly results in forgiveness and brings joy to Christ and eventually to us as we grow in faith and knowledge and learn to walk comfortably in the fire of His word. Our “meat” is either our false doctrinal meal or the spiritual sacrifice Christ desires. Our ‘meat’ offering is our sacrifice of spiritually dying daily to our sins and not pointing our finger at our brother’s sins.

Mat 5:23  Therefore if thou bring thy gift [prayers for ‘gimme this, or gimme that’ of selfish needs while not acknowledging your sins] to the altar, and there rememberest that thy brother hath ought against thee;
Mat 5:24  Leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy way; first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come and offer thy gift. 

Luk 18:10 Two men went up into the temple to pray; the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. 
Luk 18:11  The Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. 
Luk 18:12  I fast twice in the week, I give tithes of all that I possess. 
Luk 18:13  And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his breast, saying, God be merciful to me a sinner. 
Luk 18:14  I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. 

Isa 58:6  Is not this the fast that I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? [How? By acknowledging from our ‘publican-like heart our sin] 
Isa 58:7  Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry [soul within!], and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house? when thou seest the [yourself] naked, that thou cover him; and that thou hide not thyself from thine own flesh? [FIRST inwardly and outwardly]
Isa 58:8  Then shall thy light break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily: and thy righteousness shall go before thee; the glory of the LORD shall be thy rereward. 

Joe 1:17  The seed is rotten under their clods [shovel; sweep away], the garners [treasure, storehouse] are laid desolate, the barns are broken down; for the corn is withered [now shovelled out of the barn is dried up, mouldy and useless]. 

The seed being rotten directly corresponds to us being of our first father, the Devil and thus, his spiritually rotten seed. Wheat seed stored not completely dry in the garner or storehouse goes rotten and utterly stinks. It needs to be shovelled out of the silo by hand and comes out in big, stinking “clods”. Jesus, speaking to those Jews figurative ‘stinking clods’ who believed in him, meaning Christians, says,

Joh 8:44  Ye are of your father the devil [his rotten seed], and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. 

1Co 15:34  Awake to righteousness, and sin not; for some have not the knowledge of God: I speak this to your shame. 
1Co 15:35  But some man will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? 
1Co 15:36  Thou fool, that [seed] which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: 
1Co 15:37  And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: 
1Co 15:38  But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own body. 

1Pe 1:21  Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God. 
1Pe 1:22  Seeing ye have purified your souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto unfeigned love of the brethren, see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently: 
1Pe 1:23  Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.

Needless to say, the result of not having good seeds to sow means there won’t be a harvest. As such, the beasts representing the people, groan because their priests have fed the laity Satan’s lies and are “perplexed” at the enigma the entirety of scripture is. Subsequently, the flock is made a desolate woman, even The Great Whore, who rules over the nations.

Joe 1:18  How do the beasts groan! the herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture; yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate.

Rev 17:15  And he saith unto me, The waters which thou sawest, where the whore sitteth, are peoples, and multitudes, and nations, and tongues [the entire World]. 
Rev 17:16  And the ten horns [Is the Beast] which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. 
Rev 17:17  For God hath put in their hearts [being those Jews/Christians who believe in ‘another Jesus’  (2Co 11:3-4)] to fulfil his [God’s] will, and to agree, and give their kingdom unto the beast [Non-Christian world that includes themselves] until the words of God shall be fulfilled. 
Rev 17:18  And the woman which thou sawest is that great city, [The Great Whore of Ephraiam-like Christianity inclusive of all other religions] which reigneth over the kings of the earth.

Joe 1:19  O LORD, to thee will I cry: for the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field. 
Joe 1:20  The beasts of the field cry also unto thee: for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness. 

The beasts of the field, representing mankind, are bereft of the truth in Christ since God gave us all over to spiritual deafness and blindness except for the little flock He called out of Babylon, representing Gentile Christianity and the world.

Rom 11:25  For I would not, brethren, that ye should be ignorant of this mystery, lest ye should be wise in your own conceits; that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles [Babylon, the world] be come in.

Isa 5:24  Therefore as the fire devoureth the stubble, and the flame consumeth the chaff, so their root shall be as rottenness, and their blossom shall go up as dust: because they have cast away the law of the LORD of hosts, and despised the word of the Holy One of Israel. 

Our former dismissal of our Lord’s ‘light bread’ doctrine emanating from his ‘good seed’, meaning the simplicity in Christ, didn’t sensually bond us to Him as it didn’t Old Israel in the wilderness to her Husband. The seed He planted in our hearts rotted in the earthy beast which we are.

Because of women’s intrinsic nature to be emotionally bonded to a husband that enigmatically enchants him and unwittingly curses us all because of her ‘inventive’ nature to capture men’s hearts (Ecc 7:23-29), she becomes the mother of harlots, the Lord’s former wife, Old Israel and us. Subsequently, ‘the beasts of the field perplexedly today cry also unto Christ: for unwittingly, the rivers of Christ’s commands are dried up, and his fiery word hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness’.

Babylonian Christianity found the Bible impossible to systematically piece together for understanding, as it did John regarding his visions in Revelations. Thus, it was much easier to default to the adage, ”Jesus loves you,” since that maxim soothed their consciences, paradoxically condemning them for the looming death in the equally inscrutable Lake of Fire.

Heb 10:26  For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins, 
Heb 10:27  But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. 

On that note, it leads us next week, Lord willing, to Chapter 2, “The Day of the Lord.” ‘A day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and thick darkness, as the morning spread upon the mountains’ Joe 2:2.